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Jewish World Review
Jan. 23, 2013/ 12 Shevat, 5773
Is Obama making JFK-style mistakes?
By
Jay Ambrose
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
You bump into an article in The Atlantic magazine. It’s about John F. Kennedy, an American hero writ large – except that he wasn’t. It tells of how he put the world at risk for the sake of politics during the Cuban missile crisis, though finally coming to his senses, and you think about another charismatic American president, Barack Obama. Will he come to his senses, too?
As of the inauguration, it didn’t look like it, but let’s start with Kennedy. I was a teen when he was elected, and I idolized him. He was smart, witty, athletic, good-looking, articulate, idealistic, full of energy and more. What wasn’t to like? Of course, it was much later that we learned about the character failings, that a lot of that energy, for instance, owed something to amphetamines. They were one of many drugs used to address terrible health issues he never confessed to the nation.
He wasn’t bad on all policies, to be sure, but then there was his backing of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and his reckless deepening of our involvement in Vietnam. The worst of his fumbling was taking us to within inches of nuclear war. It is detailed in a new book, “The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory,” by Sheldon Stern, head of the John F. Kennedy Library for more than two decades.
In a review of the work in the January /February issue of The Atlantic, Benjamin Schwarz points out that much of this information has been known for years, even though a far more positive version seems to prevail in the public imagination, fostered there by Kennedy colleagues and an obliging media. So know, first off, that the Soviet Union put the missiles in Cuba because we had parked missiles in its backyard, namely Turkey, and because the Kennedy administration had been trying every trick there is, including assassination attempts, to depose Fidel Castro’s communist government.
Kennedy’s own taped words show he himself knew perfectly well that missiles close to our shores posed no more danger than missiles that could be launched from afar. The problem was politics and how it would look if we didn’t make a fuss and get the Soviet Union to back down. Kennedy and gang therefore put on their tough-guy hats, initiated a Cuban blockade and made it known that they would settle for nothing less than the other side’s unconditional retreat. It seemed the Soviet Union wouldn’t budge. All hell could easily have broken loose, and that is hell as in the most devastating war humanity has ever known.
In the final analysis, the Kennedy who got us into the crisis got us out of it through a deal to remove our missiles from Turkey if the Soviets would remove theirs from Cuba. The best in him finally came out, although the deal was kept secret and cohorts happily bashed the reputations of those who publicly suggested the solution he adopted. Will Obama let the best in him come out in a second term?
Like Kennedy, he is a charmer. He has a keen intellect. He is a great speaker. And like Kennedy, he can be worse than amateurish, as in “Obamacare” (debt-expanding, job-inhibiting and full of “gotcha” mistakes), helping to give us the worst economic recovery since World War II and enlarging the debt that could wreck us (refusing even the compromise suggested by leaders of his own debt commission and negotiating with Republicans as if nobility telling the peons to go hang).
Unlike Kennedy, he is acting like he may never get it right. As Obama has himself conceded, the heart of our debt problem is the unsustainable entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Without restructuring, they will collapse along with just about everything else in government. But in his inaugural, he made it sound as if he were more interested in political points than reform, and the threat of charisma is that too many idolaters overlook ruinous faults and there is too little pressure for change. Bad outcomes and wiser Republicans may induce that change, though, and let’s all keep hoping.
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Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
01/02/13: Kerry nomination emblematic of woes coming
12/26/12: Hollywood beats Harvard in history?
12/12/12: Immigration issues solve themselves
12/06/12: Durbin's deficiency
11/29/12: Man of the century
11/21/12: A big scandal coming?
11/14/12: U.S. should follow the Swedish path
11/07/12: Hanging from a poll
• 10/31/12: A dream that wouldn't come true
• 10/29/12: When the 'kooks' and 'racists' turn out to be your ideological allies
• 10/24/12: The pettiness refuge
• 10/18/12: An interruption that tells a bigger tale
• 10/17/12: A recovery that wasn't
• 10/12/12: Big Bird squabble points to something real
• 10/11/12: The 'war' you don't hear about --- the one on average Americans
• 08/22/12: Obama leadership: Romney's returns trump road to recovery
• 08/15/12: Saving Medicare the Ryan way
• 08/01/12: Combatting free speech
• 07/25/12: Good and bad reactions to Colorado horror
• 07/18/12: Apology time for Obama
• 07/16/12: Free markets solve climate change threats
• 07/11/12: Humans and particles and those who would order them
• 07/06/12: Why we'll miss Andy Griffith
• 07/05/12: All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
• 07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
• 06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
• 06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
• 06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
• 06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
• 06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
• 06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
• 06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
• 06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
• 05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
• 05/23/12: Student loans fail students
• 05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
• 05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
• 05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
• 05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
• 05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
• 04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
• 04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
• 04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
• 04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
• 04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
• 04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
• 04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
• 04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
• 03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
• 03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
• 03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
• 03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
• 03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
• 03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
• 03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
• 03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
• 02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
• 02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
• 02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
• 02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
• 02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
• 02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
• 02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
• 01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
• 01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
• 01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
• 01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
• 01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
• 01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
• 01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
• 01/04/12: How America smothers itself
• 12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
• 12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
• 12/21/11: A tale of two men
• 12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
• 12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
• 12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
• 12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
• 12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
• 11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
• 11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
• 11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
• 11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
• 11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
• 11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
• 11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
• 11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
• 10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
• 10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest —- or at least shouldn't be
• 10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
• 10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
• 09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
• 09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
• 09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
• 09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
• 09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
• 09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
• 09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
• 09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
• 08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
• 08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
• 08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
• 08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
• 08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
• 08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
• 08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
• 08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
• 08/03/11: The people who may save America
• 07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
• 07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
• 07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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